In the back of the Crate...

Back in middle school when I started noticing that my "friends" were slowly finding their respective musical "in crowd". My former best friend decided at some point in his eighth grade career, that it was now time to get rid of the Nirvana and Soundgarden in his collection and traded it for something "new and exiting".

In a matter of days, he shaved of his hair including his payas and became some sort of a Jewish amalgamation of a hard core skinhead but with more Fat Wrekords songs as his anthem rather than any relevant music to his alleged scene. Come 9th grade my school had a whole gang of wannabe S.H.A.P.S with my former friend as their leader. The funny thing was that most of them if not all were Jewish and looked more like Neo-nazis than an original skin.

At some point that year, he decided to have a party. His parents not realizing that we were not really friends anymore, invited me to his party. I only went because I liked his parents. They would let me go to shull with them and I loved going because during kiddish I would pig out and get mad drunk on sweet kosher wine and I just thought they were cool cause they would let me get that drunk...or just drunk for that matter.

Anyways I'm at his party and all the cool kids were there, plus me. There was this one 12th grader from another school who was also a Jewish wannabe neo nazi. He had this mixed tape that he wanted to play for the party... he put it on and the first song to come out was "sick boy" by GBH. Everyone was moshing inside the house messing up furniture and being "sooooo cooool" and hard (kind of like an icicle). Then came the Kicker. The next song was starting and the kids were still goofing off... Immediately I recognized the song from listening to the late night shows on WCSB (I used to have a really bad sleeping disorder and it was all WCSB's fault). The moment I had figured out what the song was I ran into the kitchen to make sure I was not part of what was about to happen.

The song was by Screwdriver (need I say more?) The minute the band on the tape started singing about... 7 "N" words and about 4 anti semitic remarks were made. The Party boy's mom rushed down the stairs grabbed the tape and tossed across the room. Yelled for a few minutes as her son yelled back. Eventually the mom left threw the tape in the garbage and told him that he was only allowed to play stuff out of his collection.

The last song on one of the party boy's the tape was about to be over and the party boy told one of his lackies to go get a crate of CD's from his room (a decision he probably regrets up to this day) . In a matter of minutes the guy came down with a crate full of cd's. He spilled the content on the floor and everyone dove in to check out what other stuff could be played. All of the sudden it got really quite. I came out of the kitchen to see what was going on. By the time I got to the living room... the kids started ridiculing the party boy. It got so bad they made him cry . He told everyone to leave. As I was leaving through the living room door I took a quick look at the floor. At that moment It all made sense. There was a Paul Simon tape, Best of Cat Stevens cd, A Greateful dead cd along with a bunch 90's grunge bands.

I think it was more the crying more than anything else but eventually his "Skin" posse disbanded and once again he had to find a new scene to fit in to. Last I heard he was into rap metal.

I think it is a shame that at some point when growing up we decide that we have to be cool and impress everyone. I know it is part of growing up... but man it is a full time Job. I know the party boy loved the stuff that was on that crate. He used to know all the lyrics to all those songs and learned to play them on guitar. He was so afraid of people finding out that he enjoyed this music that he eventually destroyed all those tapes and cd's. He did not even want to trade them in for money because he was a afraid someone would recognize him and make fun of him for it.

Poor party Boy.

The Real question

So what was in the back of your musical crate/ shelve/ collection that you are or were ashamed of for one reason or another?

At what age did you become ashamed by your prior musical taste.?

What was the catalyst?

Did some of those former shameful secretes come back to your regular collection?

In retrospect what little "scene" would you have rather been in with in your musical past?

well...number one i am not now nor have i ever been embarrassed about liking any music that i do or have liked. i don't know, it's like i'm totally immune to that feeling. why would someone be afraid to admit that they like a certain band, or song?
all you gotta do is look at the track listings of my mix cds to get an idea of the shit i think is awesome, such as Lobo, Fleetwood Mac, John Cougar Mellencamp (even after he dropped the Cougar),hmm what else (i'm trying to think of what other people would be embarrassed of...) oh Ace of Base, the Partridge Family, and how about one more example...oh! one of my favorite songs is "Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon. it's so fun to sing.

See, it's not that hard! what ever happened to that old saying "let your freak flag fly"? haha

i also own cds by P.M. Dawn, C+C Music Factory, Marilyn Manson, Candlebox, Ugly Kid Joe, and believe it or not, i used to own an N*Sync cd. am i ashamed? NO!
"Space Cowboy" was very danceable.

as far as record albums go, let's see...i've got Robert Palmer, Pat Benatar, about 3 Madonnas, J. Geils Band...it's so hard to think because i really don't think there's anything wrong with them!

oh yeah i just thought of something else: my personal music taste timeline. i think people should do this one too.

birth-age 10: strictly oldies & soft rock

age 10-14: early 90's "hip hop" or whatever you'd call it, as well as weird stuff like Butt Trumpet and EMF (whatever they were playing on POWER 108! haha)

age 14-16: early 90s alternative--back when WMMS was still cool. the era of Jennifer Wylde and that other DJ named Sue something. oh yeah also "Love Lines"!! haha...i also thought i was a hippie for awhile--i was all into Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, all that stuff. i also had a Beatles obsession somewhere in there around the age of 15.

age 16-19: this is when i liked Kid Rock, ICP, and the Flys. well that was ONE end of the spectrum. on the other, i was listening to Duran Duran, the Frogs, and Haircut 100.

age 19-23: my "indie rock" phase. included screamo bands and also what they call "math rock". i liked Majority Rule, Modest Mouse, Wolfie, Joan of Arc, Orchid, and stuff like that.

age 23-present: i believe this is when i "came into my own" as they say. i've found my "niche" or whatever i guess. there's been an interesting progression though...started with garagey music (Mummies, etc.) then some current underground rock'n'roll stuff (Mistreaters, etc.), and now i'd say the music i'm most into is soul (especially female singers), swing, dance music (waltz/bossa nova kind of dancing), vocalists from the 30's-early 50's (you know, Dean Martin, Peggy Lee, etc.) and just flat-out stupid shit like novelty albums.

but i have not left my past behind--i still listen to pretty much everything i ever have listened to before as well!

Just to get an Idea of how bad music can sometimes get. I got this band's tape as b-day present when I turned 10 or 9. I had asked for it too. This will never come back to my collection though. You have to understand... you had an entire group of prepubescent boys imitating these guys.

Thanks to Liz and _Live Transmission_ for playing "Oh Superman" by Laurie Anderson from _Big Science_ (1982). I unloaded all of my vinyl years ago when I started moving frequently significant distances. I forgot I had _Big Science_ and now I know what has been the source of that gnawing feeling that something was missing from my life.

I admit constantly, as well as PLAY, hair metal. Not ashamed at all!! I have admitted to some guilty pleasures, like 1/2 of New Wave--Pretenders, And many one-hit wonders. Still love it. Most New wave sucked assholes. My collection has ODB, White Zombie, Benatar, Sabbath, Ratt, etc., etc. on the same shelves; not categorized, let alone alphabetized. I'm always pulling from it, along to it, adding to it, etc. I love the words etc. Come over to see (some) diversity. No suck, though, unless it's....

Would you believe I actually have all the ABBA singles? On 45s, too? And yes -- I once went through a disco phase, too -- although I NEVER owned a copy of the 'SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER' soundtrack, thank God -- although I still have several 45s from that period, including David "American Werewolf In London" Naughton's 'Making It'. And I once even owned a copy of that Klatuu LP back when everyone was wondering whether or not they were really the Beatles incognito!

Need I say more?

And another thing: I sleep in the BOTTOM of my crate.

HARK TO THE BRILLIANCE IN THE DARK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HALLOWEEN IS JUST 19 DAYS AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!![Time of writing, of course ...]

yeah i was over loons house a couple months ago and damn i cant remember what was at the top of the pile...was it elliott smith or somethin like that??? and i called him out on it and hes like "hey i have a softer side"

actually i never noticed this topic so it is funny that i type this while literally before me is a stack of like stone temple pilots and alice in chains cds that i was using last week for some horrible alternablast cutup material.........

vinyl wise-i have plenty of horrible wax that i have acquired since high school. hell, i still by horrible horrible records. my vinyl is organized by genre(just like the statioN) but i seriously have a "crap" section. like, the worst of the worst. that no one could ever get into. woah i should do some dricore style show and just bring a crate of that shit down....eeeewwww

lucky for me i never liked music until i got into nirvana...never got into the vanilla ice or what have you that the friends liked.....so i guess i lucked out there

I have recently come to terms with my like for Duran Duran. I have always liked it as pop, but only in recent years did I appreciate their actual ABILITY. I also go to ICP concerts, and have even recently surprised some when admitting I have seen Hall & Oates and REO and other bands of the like.

A few weeks ago I was listening to this show on a college radio station in Toledo, and they this really fucked up song by a band called Say Anything. The song was called "Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too", and it's about having an inappropriate online/phone relationship with a teenage girl (the chorus of the song goes, "I called her on the phone and she touched herself/she touched herself/she touched herself.../I laughed myself to sleep". And it's got this slow, catchy dancepop beat.

I just had to get that song from iTunes the next day.

But it's a very guilty pleasure. Not because of the song's content. It's because Say Anything is an emo band (although they don't sound emo on that song), and that video for that song has been played on MTV. Of course, since I haven't had cable for a couple years, I had no idea it had been anywhere near MTV. (I wouldn't think that MTV would actually air that song, even if MTV does have a standard for raunchiness or whatever.)